


the rose room

by chainofclovers



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: F/F, Post-Season/Series 05, temporal thresholds!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:55:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22248220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainofclovers/pseuds/chainofclovers
Summary: Frankie winces almost imperceptibly at the wordfriend.(A story for the new year.)
Relationships: Frankie Bergstein/Grace Hanson
Comments: 54
Kudos: 170





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sneaking in pretty darn close to the last possible minute (well, with a day and a half to spare) to post a story I just had to finish before the release of _Grace and Frankie_ season 6. 
> 
> All the quoted lines of poetry are from "Crescent" by C.D. Wright.
> 
> Many thanks to my love bristler for the helpful, insightful beta!

_In recent months I have become intent on seizing happiness: to this end I applied various shades of blue…_

—C.D. Wright, from “Crescent”

⁂

**New Year’s Day, 2020**

The five guest bedrooms at Annie’s Bed & Breakfast have unofficial names: the rose room, the blue room, the Southwest room, the sunset room, the sunrise room. Rebekah keeps a running tally of current guests in her head, pairs each guest or group to their nicknamed location. It helps her keep track of who’s had breakfast already and who hasn’t turned up. With the exception of some part-time housekeeping help, she’s run the B&B on her own since its namesake—her mother—passed away years ago. It’s hard work, but her efficiency makes it manageable. 

When a guest books a room online, they click on practical names that tell them what they need to know: Two Queens, One King, One King (Deluxe), One Queen (West-Facing Picture Window), One Queen and One Full with Twin-sized Trundle (East-Facing Picture Window). But each listing includes lots of preview photos, and Rebekah knows guests don’t only choose between beds and their corresponding prices but between the restful rose wallpaper in one room, the clean azure paint in another, the woven blankets and terra cotta pottery, a cocktail and a window seat as the sun goes down, the gradual orange blush of an early morning.

Regular guests absorb the rooms’ nicknames, coming to think of their favorite spots as their own. They call Rebekah on the phone when they need a little vacation from reality. “Annie,” they say. “Is the blue room open next weekend?”

A lot of people think Rebekah’s name is Annie. 

The B&B was full on New Year’s Eve, and this morning Rebekah served a hearty breakfast to sop up the excesses of the night before. The dining room is empty now. Serving time has come and gone, and every guest is fed, checked out, or otherwise accounted for except the two older women in the rose room. They don’t check out until tomorrow, so Rebekah isn’t worried—just tallying, just thinking. She darts between the dining area and adjoining kitchen, stacking dishes, packaging leftovers in the fridge, sweeping crumbs from the table. She’s leaning over the dishwasher when she feels a presence behind her. 

“Morning.” 

Rebekah stands up and turns. One of the rose room women, the one with long curly hair, stands in the center of the dining room. She wears a caftan of many colors, brown woollen boots on her feet, and a guilty, missed-breakfast smile. She’s the one who called to check for cancellations just a few days ago even though there were no rooms available online. The diligence paid off; when a cancellation came through yesterday morning, she was first on the list. 

“Morning,” Rebekah says. “Ms. Bergstein, right? Frankie?”

The woman’s smile widens. “Yes! Rebekah. Happy New Year.”

“Same to you.”

“I’m sorry we missed breakfast.” 

Rebekah waits for an excuse and a request—overslept, too much New Year’s Eve fun, any chance you could cook up a little something just for us?—but none arrive.

“Is there a corner store somewhere around here?” Frankie gestures down the hallway in the general direction of her room, and Rebekah gets an image of the woman she arrived with yesterday, tailored and trim and quiet. Usually people are scattered and carefree when they check in, already in vacation mode, but she’d seemed—not somber, exactly, but very focused. “Don’t want to return empty-handed.”

Frankie’s got to be pushing seventy-five, and she’s dressed in layers of colorful gauze. No coat. Her willingness to walk into slushy thirty-degree weather makes Rebekah charitable. “I’ll do you one better,” she says. “Does your friend like cinnamon scones?”

Frankie winces almost imperceptibly at the word _friend_. Rebekah catches it. She ought to know better; she recognizes Frankie’s reaction as if it came from her own body. _Friend_ was one of her mother’s favorite words. How many times over the years did she cringe as Annie introduced Rebekah’s partner to relatives and family friends that way?

“I think Grace might be open to a scone,” Frankie says, taking time and pleasure with the monosyllabic name. “I personally am very open to scones.”

“Coffee, too?”

“Did anyone ever tell you you’re a good egg?”

Rebekah prepares a tray: a bowl of fruit salad with two forks, scones on a saucer, two cups of coffee from the still-warm pot, a tiny pitcher of cream, sugar lumps on a small glass plate. She takes a jar from the cabinet and fills it with water, plucks a few daisies from the vase on the counter. A morning-after breakfast tray. An apology for the word _friend_. “So,” she says as she works. “You said on the phone you were driving up from San Diego. What brings you to the San Bernardino mountains?”

“Oh, you know,” Frankie says airily. “Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.” Rebekah can tell, somehow, that she’s telling the absolute truth. Frankie smiles, not at Rebekah, not at her own word choice, not at the fruit and scones and coffee, but at some private happiness. When Rebekah hands her the tray, they look each other in the eye. “She wanted to see snow,” Frankie says, “and you have a lot of that here.” 


	2. Chapter 2

_…do I still remind you of a locust clinging to a branch: I give you an idea of the damages: you would let edges be edges: believe me…_

⁂ 

**Christmas Day, 2019**

Grace looks at herself in the bathroom mirror while she waits for Frankie to pick up the phone. The hand not holding her phone to her ear grips the small blue towel laid next to the sink. Her lipstick is freshly applied—red today, for Christmas. The original lipstick is a smudge on the wine glass she left on the dining room table when she excused herself the moment her and Nick’s festive early dinner was over. 

“Hi,” Frankie says. Grace smiles. For Frankie, for herself at having reached her. “Merry Christmas.” 

“You too.” Grace’s voice is normal. Not slurred (not drunk enough). Not maudlin (not sad enough, just a little melancholy, like she’s in a Vince Guaraldi song). Her reflection reminds her: keep it that way. “And Happy Hanukkah. It’s the—the fourth night, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, the fourth night.” 

There’s a long window over the mirror. It’s just past sundown, and the rectangle of sky holds a soft rich darkness. “Did you light the candles yet?”

“Nah, you’re the one who gets into the whole candle thing. Before we ended up at the beach house, I hadn’t gotten out the menorah since the boys still lived at home.” 

“But you like it too, don’t you?” Grace doesn’t want to feel humored; she knows Hanukkah isn’t the most important Jewish holiday, but celebrating it with Frankie is important to her. Frankie taught her the prayers, showed her how to add candles from right to left as the nights progressed. It was awkward at first, singing in Hebrew with only her voice and Frankie’s in the room, but they’ve celebrated for several years now, and she looks forward to the way the words come back each year. Except this one, apparently.

“Well, yeah. I like it too.” Frankie clears her throat. “Are you okay? You sound weird.” 

“I’m fine.” Grace and Nick’s bathrobes hang on hooks on the wall behind her, his a plush grey, hers a plush pale blue. They look good hanging there, an effortless his-and-hers sweetness. The bathroom has two sinks, too, like the penthouse was just waiting for her, was always meant for two people to start and end their days here. She’s part of the equation. She entered it voluntarily. 

She wants to use the word “homesick.” She wants to ask Frankie to come pick her up and take her home. Grace might not have gone to any sleepovers as a kid, but the misery she feels is a sleepover misery, a childhood misery. Being stuck in the wrong place, too proud or too scared to ask to go home.

“Cool,” says Frankie. 

“I miss you.” These are the words that have eaten at her the entire day. The words will kill her if she doesn’t say them, so she’s in the bathroom, saying them as quietly as she can without risking Frankie’s poor hearing.

“In the house way?”

“Yes,” Grace says. 

Their shorthand language for missing each other—refined over the last couple of months—makes it easier to talk about the way things changed after she married Nick. There are as many ways as there are days in a year. Some are easy. It’s simple to say “I miss you in the lunch way,” and the cure is almost immediate: they make up a Vybrant errand, grab lunch while they’re out, let lunch turn into a meal followed by a long, slow cup of coffee. There’s the bad TV way, the least favorite chore way, the why aren’t you here to make me a cup of tea way, the radio way. There are so many shows and chores and songs about the ocean. 

“I miss you, too. In the house way. And in the afternoon decaf way. I made too much again.”

“Nick got dressed in regular clothes first thing this morning.” 

Frankie gasps. “On _Christmas_? That’s terrible.”

“I know.” Grace misses how much Frankie loves pajamas, how they’d spend Christmas Day in a little cocoon separate from the reality of all the other days of the year. It was important not to get dressed, not to leave the house. Frankie would make a big plate of snacks, and they’d get a little high and half-watch movies and doze on a couch piled with blankets. It was the one day Grace was as good at relaxation as Frankie was. “So I just—got up and got dressed, too.”

“When in Rome, I guess.” 

Grace turns away from the mirror and leans against the edge of the counter. “I’m doing everything wrong,” she says. “I know I am.” 

“Honey.” 

Grace takes a deep breath. “Like, in one example out of about a million, I’m drinking too much again, and Nick keeps turning it into a celebration.” 

“What do you mean?”

“He walks in and says things like ‘Oh, what are we toasting?’ or ‘Cheers!’ and doesn’t criticize me, ever.”

“I never knew how to talk about it, either.”

“I know. But at least you never pretended to be happy with me when there was nothing to be happy about.” 

“Grace, that’s the most depressing thing I’ve heard in my entire life.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean—” There’s a long pause, and then Frankie asks a question she’s never articulated before. “Do you think you made a mistake in marrying him?”

Usually, they treat Grace’s decision like immutable fact. They talk around it when they talk to each other about each other. They assume Grace will be married to Nick forever, and their friendship will always exist in the adaptive space where the marriage isn’t. 

“I think I did.” The colors in the room sharpen when she says it out loud. “I wanted to upset you, but then we weren’t angry with each other anymore, and—I’ve wanted you to miss me.”

“I do miss you.” Frankie sighs, a breath to take up space, then gasps a little. “Grace, where are you right now, how are you talking about this?” 

“I’m locked in the bathroom.” 

“Do you need me to come pick you up?”

“It would hurt—” Nick. It will hurt Nick. It will hurt her, too. Grace knows what abandonment feels like, how mattering less than someone else feels like drowning. She’s never been the person to leave a serious relationship, though she understands leaving for lack of love. This isn’t that, exactly. This leaving.

“I know it would.” Is Frankie holding back tears? “I want you to be happy. I want you to do what you need to do to be happy. You can—you can do that.”

Their goodbyes, exchanged soon after, feel temporary. When she’s off the phone, Grace walks down the long hallway until she finds Nick sitting at the bar in the kitchen. 

“Hey,” she says. Her voice still sounds normal to her, but she probably sounds as strange to Nick as she sounded to Frankie.

“Hey. What can I get you? Martini? Spiked hot cocoa? Not that you would. Glass of water?”

“Nothing for now.” She tries to smile.

“How’s Frankie?” 

So it was that obvious, what she left the dinner table to do.

“She’s Frankie.”

“You know, you don’t have to talk to her in the bathroom. This is your house.” There’s an edge to his voice, subtle enough to miss.

Grace doesn’t miss it; she knows him too well. She bows her head. “I don’t know why I miss her so much.” 

When she looks up again, Nick’s staring straight at her. He lets the silence hang. When he breaks it, everything stays quiet. “I’m pretty sure I do.” 

⁂

“I’m one-hundred percent sober and feeling very confident about the highway,” Frankie says once they’re both buckled up in Frankie’s car, Grace’s overnight bag perched in the backseat. “And I’ve been eating a lot of carrots, so I’m pretty sure the restrictions on my license no longer apply. The vision test at the DMV came at a real beta carotene low point for me.” Frankie turns to look at Grace for the last time until they’re back at the beach house. “I’m a lot smarter than Nick,” she says. “So you can’t necessarily go on treating yourself like shit.” She starts the car, places her hands at 10 and 2, and Grace can see the moment Frankie resolves to lay it on thick. “I expect better.”

Grace should be embarrassed that she’s drunk, embarrassed Nick asked her to leave, embarrassed about their irreconcilable differences. She should be embarrassed her best friend had to pick her up and take her away, embarrassed about backsliding and getting worse and making bad decisions and being called out. But the embarrassment can’t reach her. She smiles out the window as city turns to highway turns to beach. 

When they get to the house, Frankie doesn’t change into pajamas. Grace would like to be more comfortable than she is in her blouse and slacks, but she sets her overnight bag on the stairs and hovers on the main floor. Although she’s occasionally visited the beach house since the night of her marriage, she wanders through the rooms taking inventory. There are no decorations up, no crumpled blankets or empty plates or other evidence of a Christmas spent lounging. There are no notable messes, no obvious signs of Grace’s absence.

Grace wanders into the kitchen where Frankie stands at the stove making hot chocolate, the real kind with milk, and observes Frankie’s dedication to the unusual task. She doesn’t forget about it halfway through, doesn’t scorch the milk or leave lumps of unmixed chocolate. Her whisk scrapes the metal of the saucepan over and over. Grace sits on one of the bar chairs and listens. Frankie sits next to her when the cocoa is done, a mug in both their hands. 

“A Christmas treat,” Frankie says wryly. 

“Thanks.” They drink in silence for awhile. The cocoa is almost too hot, but thankfully it isn’t too sweet. It heats Grace’s throat, then her chest. It heats her palms.

“So what are you doing here?” Frankie asks abruptly. 

“What do you mean?” She finished eating Christmas dinner. She called Frankie. They had a strange conversation. When she left the conversation, Nick could tell something was up. He offered her drinks and space to fix it, and it didn’t work, and when they did have another drink despite Grace’s initial refusal, it made her uncontained. Visibly unhappy. Talking more didn’t work. Made it worse. Nick suggested she leave the next day, and Grace didn’t want to wait until morning. She called Frankie back. Frankie went to get her, and now they’re here. “I’m pretty sure you know everything I know.”

“Well, I mean, are you _here_ here, or did you just get drunk and realize you didn’t want to sleep with a guy who puts on a polo shirt at 8 a.m. on Christmas and now you’re here for the night?” 

“It was 7:45. It was a button-down and a sweater.”

“Grace.” 

“I’m _here_ here,” Grace says. “I think we both know what that means.”

There’s a flicker of happiness in Frankie’s face. “I think I do, but you should tell me.” 

Grace relaxes her grip on her cocoa mug. Straightens out her fingers, watches the skin stretch between each digit. “It means I’m officially a failure at romantic relationships.” 

“Oh.” The joy has drained from Frankie’s expression. 

Grace tries to smile. “We broke up,” she says, horrified that Frankie still might not understand this fact. “It’s a good thing,” she says, maybe convincingly. “I missed you too much to be with Nick. And I should’ve known he was always going to make me choose eventually, especially if we got married—”

“Should we not talk about this right now? I mean—haven’t you been drinking?”

 _When has that stopped us_ , Grace wonders. “I’m me,” she says. “I’m fine. I’m not very drunk. I just wanted to come home. I’d have wanted to come home if I’d had a bunch more drinks, and I’d have wanted to come home if I was sober.” 

“Okay,” Frankie says quietly. Her face is blotchy all of a sudden, like she’s unevenly heated. 

“Frankie, what’s the matter?”

Frankie looks at her lap. “I don’t know, if you missed me so much, why don’t you—”

“Why don’t I what?”

“If you missed me so much, then why do you have to be a failure at romantic relationships? Why does that have to be your conclusion?”

Grace reaches for Frankie’s shoulder. It always grounds her to touch Frankie, always stabilizes her. But this time it’s like reaching for lava or reaching into quickstand. Her hand technically lands on Frankie—makes contact with her small, solid body—but the sensation is like liquid. 

Frankie continues. “Sometimes we’re holding hands, and it’s not enough that we’ve each got one of our hands involved. You find the other, and then we’re holding hands with both hands. When you hug me it’s like—sustenance. For me, but for you, too. And you missed me enough to leave your husband on Christmas Day, and I missed you enough that I didn’t try to convince you that was a mean thing to do.” 

“The house way.” She should feel panicked now, familiar and annoying, but she doesn’t. It’s like the earlier embarrassment she deserved but didn’t feel. None of it competes with being home with Frankie. 

Frankie nods. “Our place.” 

“I was thinking the other day about how old we are,” Grace says. She prays Frankie understands she isn’t changing the subject. 

“Especially you.”

“Especially me,” Grace says. Frankie can have that one. “And I was thinking about how easily we could end up never seeing snow again.” Grace was happy to leave the East Coast all those years ago, and she’s seen snow (beautiful, cold, best in small doses) occasionally ever since, but who’s to guarantee it will happen again? She’s been to what feels like dozens of funerals in recent years, funerals for people who all, surely, have their own equivalents—a favorite food they ate for the last time without realizing it, an important conversation, final drinks with a friend. Last day of work, last vacation, last train ride, last airplane, last Christmas, last sex. 

“That won’t happen. I promise.” 

“How? How can you promise that?”

“I won’t let it happen.” Frankie smiles. “I mean, don’t die literally tonight, I mean, you might have to wait a little bit, but—I promise.” She leaves it at that, doesn’t scramble to throw a bunch of outlandish suggestions against the wall to see what sticks. She doesn’t suggest they drive up to the mountains right now, or get on a plane to Chicago, or go into the kitchen to empty the ice maker and crush the cubes into their own little blizzard. Frankie’s a fake-kiss-scheduler, a flirter with endless take-back power, an incurable tease. But she’s telling the truth, and Grace knows it; she won’t let Grace’s fear come true. They look at each other, and Frankie’s face is utterly serious. Grace trusts, this time, that Frankie sees the seriousness in her own expression, too. Frankie’s shoulder solidifies beneath her hand.


	3. Chapter 3

_…we have done these things to each other without benefit of a mirror…_

**New Year’s Eve, 2019**

⁂

Although the trip north is Frankie’s idea, Grace volunteers to drive to the B&B. In general, she’d prefer to be behind the wheel, and she’s grateful for a concrete, contained task after five days being careful not to drink too much, careful not to say anything she might regret, careful to unpack her things in all the proper places, careful not to go insane as she spends each night alone, trying to fall asleep in her old bed. She’s been convinced since she moved back home that Frankie would find her snow. Snow has taken on a life of its own, and nothing new will happen between them until they stand together in frozen weather for the first time. Grace has been to three European countries, to Canada, to Mexico, to at least forty of the fifty U.S. states. Where has she been with Frankie? The pharmacy and the bank and the farmer’s market. The ashram, once. And home and home and home. 

The snow is a decent threshold, Grace supposes, between the status quo and the possibilities they started to articulate on Christmas night. She’s spent the days since Christmas thinking about what it means to choose Frankie. For years she’s thought about her desire to be close to Frankie like she approaches any other need—she knows that wanting Frankie (having Frankie) could eventually punish her. In the past five and a half days, the sense of danger hasn’t abated at all, but it’s where she wants to be. She doesn’t require the proof Frankie’s snow will give her any more than Frankie needs to hold Grace’s divorce papers in her hands. But Frankie’s held the papers, and when they make it up to the mountains, they’ll step out of the car and feel the crunch of snow beneath their feet.

This morning—the last morning of the old year—Frankie knocked on the door of Grace’s bedroom. “There’s a vacancy at one of the B&Bs near Big Bear Lake,” she said as she walked toward Grace’s bed. Grace imagined, very suddenly, Frankie sitting down at the side of the bed, rolling Grace over from where she lay curled on her side even though it was past nine a.m. She’d press her hand between Grace’s legs, whisper _Let me, please let me_ , make her cry out—but Frankie did nothing of the kind. Instead she stayed standing in the middle of the room, nearly vibrating with excitement. “They’ve got three inches on the ground and more expected tonight.” 

“Tonight?” Grace said. Tonight felt very soon.

“I went ahead and booked a room for two nights,” Frankie admitted. “I can call and cancel—”

“Don’t,” Grace said. “Let’s go.”

Now, after an afternoon on the road, they’re almost to their destination. For most of the drive, snow-capped peaks were visible in the distance. But as Grace drives into the San Bernardino mountains, the snow feels sudden. Within moments, the car leaves behind barren ground and enters a snow-covered place. 

The roads are well-plowed. All the same, Frankie asks, “Roads good?” When Grace nods, Frankie rests a hand on her knee and breathes a sigh of relief, as if—despite having been able to see the same distant snow Grace could—she’d been afraid the snow would melt before they could get there.

“It’s beautiful,” Grace says, and Frankie squeezes.

The town is quiet. It’s easy to park, easy to check in at the sturdy, well-kept Victorian house with “Annie’s B&B” etched in ornate text into a small wooden sign on the front porch. When the woman at the front desk, whom Grace assumes is the B&B’s owner, asks if they need dinner recommendations, Frankie says she’s already made a reservation for a special New Year’s Eve meal at a lodge just down the road. Grace isn’t over that surprise by the time they wheel their suitcases into their room. In theory, she notices the white window sheers and rosy pink curtains, floral wallpaper, the mahogany chest of drawers, but the main thing she sees are two beds that fill most of the room. 

“This was the only room available,” Frankie says. She works quickly: she throws her suitcase onto the bed farther from the window, grabs Grace’s and places it next to hers, seems to make the suitcases take up as much room as possible. When she’s made the bed off-limits, she checks her phone. “We’ve got the earlier seating for this New Year’s Eve dinner thing,” she says. “You look perfect, but I’m going to trade my Willie Nelson shirt for something a bit more fine dining.”

The snow glows blue in the twilight as they walk down the sidewalk to the restaurant, arms linked so they don’t slip on the ice and fall. “I had the best rust orange coat when I was a teenager back in New York,” Frankie says wistfully. Their San Diego coats are laughably thin against the biting cold. Less than four hours on the road and they’re in another world. 

At the lodge, they’re seated in the dining room at a table with room for four, a booth side and a side for two chairs, and when the hostess sets their menus down at facing seats Frankie asks if she can sit next to Grace in the booth instead. They spend their meal looking outward at the vast dining area, making quiet observations about the other guests. They order from a limited holiday menu designed for couples, with an option to share wine and dessert. Grace is too nervous to eat much, too focused on what might or might not but probably will happen after they finish their meal and go back to the B&B. She makes her first glass of pinot grigio from their shared half-carafe last and last. 

When their dinner plates are cleared and Grace has refused a to-go box, the waiter presents them with a rectangular plate. At one end rests a piece of chocolate cake the size and shape of a small flan, a raspberry glaze drizzled artfully across the cake and the rest of the plate. “Ladies, here’s our house special, the molten lava cake.” 

Frankie laughs. “A classic fixture in the heterosexual night out.”

“Frankie!” Grace says, but the waiter guffaws. He and Frankie must have developed a rapport while she wasn’t paying attention. 

“It’s okay,” Frankie says when the waiter leaves them to their cake. “You catch those sibilants? And the rhinestone in his ear?”

“I guess.” 

“This place has a bar,” Frankie says. “With a little lounge, and if I had my crystal ball I could tell you for sure that there’d be a lot of smooth jazz happening. If you want to stick around for midnight, we can—we can do that.”

“I want to go back to the room,” Grace says immediately. She’s crossed into new years tipsy and warm with the sisters from her college secret society, drunk with strangers, alone with Robert watching the ball drop on TV, drinking martinis and serving popcorn and Martinelli’s to her daughters while Robert holed up at the office until the last possible minute, surrounded by family, frozen with depression in the activity hall of a retirement home. She’s spent December thirty-firsts hopeful and sullen and claustrophobic and cheerful and lonely. Now the universe has handed her a new kind of entrypoint into its latest decade: clear-headed and free, alone with her favorite person.

The night feels warmer on the walk back to the B&B than it did earlier in the evening. Frankie holds Grace’s hand, guides her through the front door and the doorway of their room with a hand at the small of her back. “Oh, thanks,” Grace murmurs when Frankie takes her coat.

“Hey, this is the kind of chivalry you can expect from somebody who just ate 75% of a Molten Lava Cake for Two,” Frankie says. “God, the house special. You and every Chili’s in America, buddy. You think Walter”—the waiter, Grace figures—“has a nice boyfriend to go home to tonight?”

The empty bed is the only thing in the room. The bed and Frankie. Somehow it’s already nearly eleven o’clock. The year’s running out. Grace’s breath catches in her throat. “Um,” Grace says. “I hope so.” 

“You okay?”

It’s no mystery why Frankie’s asking. Grace has barely made it past the threshold into the room. “Aren’t you nervous?” she blurts.

Frankie sits down on the edge of the available bed. “A little,” she says. She kicks off her boots. “But mostly I’m happy. Sit next to me?” Grace complies, and Frankie goes on. “Remember when you were first sleeping with Nick at the beach house, and you’d kick him out and trade your lingerie and makeup for pajamas and a big old ice pack for your fucked-up knee, and you’d come snuggle up with me on the couch?”

“Yeah,” Grace says. “It was like a reward.” A reward for a heterosexual job well done.

“You always looked happy, and I think it was because things were going well with Nick, like you had that whole situation under control, and I think it was also because I was home from Santa Fe, and I always thought you looked so beautiful. I used to imagine what it would be like if I could just get over myself and kiss you. If I could be the one making you happy.”

“You were,” Grace whispers. They’re sitting so close together. “You are.” 

Frankie kisses her. It’s a simple kiss, firm and quick, and Grace’s lantern heart glows. “I’m gonna go get ready for bed,” Frankie says. “Then you can have a turn, and then—whatever, okay?”

There are only forty minutes left in the old year by the time Grace emerges from the bathroom, looking more like the pajama-clad friend on the couch than the glamorous girlfriend, the one who tried so hard. Frankie already reclines in bed with pillows stacked against the headboard. “I don’t want to waste this room, but—” Grace stammers, tries a different route. “I’m so nervous.” 

“I feel that.” Frankie kicks the covers down and pats the space on the mattress between her legs. “Come sit with me?”

Grace sits on the edge of the bed, swings her legs up, and scoots back until she can rest against Frankie. She pulls the sheet and blankets over their legs, lets the hemmed edge bunch around her waist.

“Talk to me,” Frankie says, and before Grace can ask her what she should talk about, she continues: “About what you see, what you hear. Anything.”

“I hear the radiator clanking,” Grace says. “It sounds like the ones we had in our house when I was a kid.”

“Us too.” Frankie shifts behind her. “Can I put my arms around you?”

“Yes.” Grace’s stomach is already floating. She’s already scared and happy in her body. Frankie’s left hand goes to the dip in Grace’s waist. She slings her right arm around Grace, across her stomach, and her right hand finds her left. Grace notices the sheets, smooth against her bare feet. “The sheets are soft,” she says. “They feel like sheets from a real person’s bed, not like bleached and starched hotel ones.” She glances around the room until her eyes light on the suitcase splayed open on the other bed. “You put a lavender sachet in your suitcase. I noticed when you opened it earlier, to find your shirt before dinner. And now the room smells good.”

“What else?”

“Your hands.”

Frankie makes a warm sound of amusement. “What about them?”

Grace takes a shaky breath. Her own hands have been resting on the blanket; now she folds her arms to mirror Frankie’s, covers Frankie’s hands with her own. “I feel them pressing against me.” 

“Yeah. They love you.” 

Frankie splays her fingers to cover more surface area, and Grace presses them against her. She bends at her waist, bends her legs at the knee, brings everything to the center like she can fold herself into Frankie. Grace shivers.

“Show me where I can touch you,” Frankie says. 

The first place she shows Frankie is an accident. She isn’t sure what to do with her hands once she hears Frankie’s request, and she brushes her fingertips against the crook of her elbow without intending to. Immediately Frankie lets go of her middle and strokes the crease of her elbow, too, lets her fingers run against the silky fabric until the area is so warm it feels like she’s touching skin. Grace points to the collar of her pajamas and Frankie takes the fabric between her index finger and thumb. She points to the back of her neck and Frankie touches there, runs her hand from her neck to the collar of her pajama top and down her spine. She points to each button on her pajama top and Frankie undoes them, parts the fabric, pulls the shirt down her shoulders, frees each arm, lets Grace turn around within her grip and remove Frankie’s t-shirt. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices for the first time the lube jar sitting on the nightstand. 

“Let me touch you,” Grace begs. 

Frankie’s eyes fall closed. “Okay,” she says shakily. “I wanna take care of you, though.” 

“I know,” says Grace. “You’ve been taking care of me all night.” She needs it. It’s too much. She runs her fingers down Frankie’s chest, swirls her fingertips against Frankie’s breasts, watches in wonder as her nipples peak. She spends a long time there, torn between looking at the places she touches and looking into Frankie’s eyes. Finally, she reaches for the lube jar and dips two fingers in the familiar substance, realizing only after her fingers are wet that Frankie’s still wearing her pajama pants. She holds up her fingers. “You’ve got to take those off yourself,” she says, and Frankie laughs. The sound turns into a moan as soon as the rest of her clothes are gone and Grace starts to stroke between her legs, lightly at first, then with more pressure. As the pressure increases, Frankie’s eyes snap open. “Grace, your wrist. We created an entire vibrator company because of your wrist. Are you sure?” 

“Yes,” Grace says. “I’m sure.” The angle’s okay, hovering half-seated above Frankie, the pillows supporting them both. Nothing hurts right now, and she doesn’t care if she wakes up stiff tomorrow. Any amount of pain is worth this moment. She realizes Frankie’s close when Frankie starts to gasp in her ear, when her muscles pulse against Grace’s hand. She moves faster, speechless and desperate and amazed, cries out when Frankie comes, breathes with her as she recovers. 

“Um,” Frankie says after a few minutes have passed in silence. “How’s it going?”

Grace chuckles. She takes in the room. The radiator congratulates her with a clank. Her wrist twinges in complaint. She can’t decide if the bedside lamp is dim or impossibly, blazingly bright. 

Frankie coughs, the sound a gentle hint. “With _you_ ,” she says. “How’s it going with you?”

Grace turns around in Frankie’s arms, returning to the position she was in when she first got into bed. “I’m good,” she says, as if addressing the room but so Frankie can hear. “I’m wet,” she adds, and her face goes hot. 

“Oh,” Frankie breathes. Her hands go immediately to the waistband of Grace’s pajama pants, and they pull off the pants and underwear together. Frankie picks up the lube jar. “Do you need a little of this?”

“Maybe a little,” Grace says. Frankie touches her, gentle and tentative at first, then with quick fingers as soon as Grace starts to writhe, starts to press herself against the mattress. 

“Almost, baby,” Frankie says. “I love you.” Grace can’t answer because she’s coming, because everything is a blur, a streak of light. Everything tilts, everything shudders—not just her, but Frankie, the bed, the house, the street. Just when she can’t stand it, everything rights itself again. 

Grace goes limp, falls back against Frankie. “Oh, God,” she says. “I love you too.” She feels Frankie hum against the top of her head. 

They rest quietly for a moment, and then Frankie startles. “What time is it?” she asks, and answers her own question with a quick glance at her cell phone. She cackles. “It’s 12:02,” she cries. “You were coming at midnight, I know you were!”

Grace laughs weakly. “What are the odds?”

“Pretty good odds now that this is in our repertoire!” Frankie squeezes her tighter. “Oh my God, you were literally having an orgasm as the decade began. This is incredible. This is my greatest contribution to society. This is the best thing I’ve ever done.” 

“Happy new year to us.” 

“Yeah. Happy new year.” Frankie tilts Grace’s head up and kisses her on the lips, soft and slow. 

⁂

Most mornings, Grace wakes up quickly. Even if she chooses to stay in bed for a while, like she did yesterday morning—somehow it was only yesterday that Frankie knocked on the bedroom door and told her they were going to the mountains—she doesn’t float between sleep and wakefulness. The moment she’s aware of waking up, she opens her eyes and places herself: if she’s with someone, if she’s alone. She figures out if she has a headache or some other variation on a hangover, locates which tendons hurt, if she aches in her muscles or in her bones. If she’s happy. If she’s going to have a good day. 

On the first morning of the new year, she wakes up bit by bit, like part of her wants to enter the good day ahead and part of her remains unready to leave the previous night behind. When she’s certain she’s awake, the room is already bright with sun reflecting off the snow.

“Hi,” Frankie exclaims. Frankie loves to sleep in, but this morning she sounds crisply alert. 

Grace rolls onto her side so she faces the center of the bed. Frankie’s sitting up against the pillows, fiddling with her phone. She presses a button with her thumb and the Neil Young album _On the Beach_ , which they’ve listened to so many times over the years, begins to play. The sound from the little phone speaker is tinny. Grace lets her head fall back into her pillow. Frankie leans over to set her phone on the nightstand and pick something up. “Want to split this edible with me?” 

She holds a bright red gummy near Grace’s mouth. Grace laughs. “Okay.” She bites it in half, and Frankie places the remainder in her own mouth. They look at each other as they chew studiously, and break into laughter at the simultaneous swallow. 

For weeks and years to come, Grace’s thoughts will return to this morning. She’ll return to it in wistfulness and in joy, will return to it sitting across from Frankie at dinner, will return to it next to her in bed at the start of a thousand other mornings. She’ll put the pieces together in a different order each time, and it won’t matter, because some mornings in a life can arrange and rearrange a thousand times and feel right no matter the construction. 

Even in the moment, the morning comes in pieces: 

The ambient air in the bedroom is warm. The bathroom is cold. Frankie pulls her back to bed—back from where? From the bathroom, and again from the other bed where she searches her suitcase for a sweater—and kisses her. Frankie throws the covers down around the foot of the bed, crawls between her legs, then thinks better of the lack of covers and shoves them back up around them. She kisses Grace’s thighs until Grace lets her legs fall open, and she licks her until Grace whimpers and comes for what could be seconds or a couple minutes or a little life tucked into her own, a life within her life. The high from the edible takes hold while Grace is brushing her teeth, and she imagines she can feel each bristle of the toothbrush stroking the inside of her mouth. She’s naked and wrapped in the covers, she’s naked walking across the room, she stands at the window watching the snow fall wearing Frankie’s Willie Nelson t-shirt and her own pajama pants. She’s in bed with Frankie, on top of Frankie, sliding down her, her mouth between Frankie’s legs, and Frankie’s thanking her, pulling her closer, begging her to keep going even though Grace would never dream of stopping. The album ends and they don’t put anything else on. The ambient air in the bedroom is cold compared to the warmth of the blankets, warm compared to the cold of the bathroom tile, cold compared to the warmth of the shower. From the bed, Grace hears muted voices and a steady clattering of plates and utensils in the dining room—she remembers: this is a bed & breakfast—and takes vague comfort in the sounds, loves how they layer against Frankie’s whispers and murmurs and cries. They leave their towels to get hot on the radiator while they shower together. They haven’t showered yet, can’t stop kissing long enough to figure out the faucet. They kiss in the shower. When they’re clean, they pull clothes from their suitcases and get dressed, but they end up back in the bed, reaching inside each other’s clothes for glimpses of skin.

“I’m a little hungry,” Grace says. She can’t hear the breakfast sounds anymore, and hasn’t for a while, maybe. She isn’t sure when she lost track of them. 

“Mmmm,” Frankie says, the syllable muffled by Grace’s neck. She stretches, and the comforter falls off the edge of the bed. “Me too.” She pecks Grace on the lips. “I’ll go hunt something down for us.” 

Frankie takes her time choosing a multicolored caftan from her suitcase, pulling on socks and stepping into her boots, tucking her phone and some cash into her bra, running a comb through her hair. Grace watches her, feels hunger sweep over her like a tide, deeper and deeper, more and more insistent. It’s the pot, but it isn’t just the pot. It’s the hunger of playing outside for hours as a child, then coming back indoors and wanting nothing more than a peanut butter sandwich. The hunger of not having to be nervous anymore and knowing Frankie will feed her and she will eat. The hunger of the sex and the hunger of the reward, finally indistinguishable. Frankie leaves the room, and if Grace lies still and listens hard enough, she can hear the edges of her voice starting a conversation. 

⁂

_… later beneath the blueness of trees the future falls out of place: something always happens: draw nearer my dear: never fear: the world spins nightly toward its brightness and we are on it_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please let me know what you think. <3


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